The stories for this week:
- NPD Results In
- New Civilization Game Coming...to Facebook
- Need for Speed Series Sells 100 Million
- Movie Studios Thinking of Holding Back DVD Rentals
- Busy Release Week
NPD Results In
So, the results are finally in and, as expected, the PS3 led the console sales. What was not necessarily expected is that The Beatles: Rock Band outsold Guitar Hero 5 in combined sales (Beatles sold on 3 systems, GH5 on 4) here. This flies in the face of what Activision said about GH5 sales being the “best yet”. I’m not sure what they were shooting for with making those statements, but they made them.
Halo 3: ODST was of course the biggest seller in September with over 1.5 million sold. Also as I hinted at a couple weeks ago, Madden 10 sales continued to do well with almost 300k sold on the 360 and just under 250k sold on the PS3. Batman: Arkham Asylum also held on in the top 10 on the PS3 with 212k sold. All in all a really good month for the industry and it will be interesting to see if the PS3 can continue to hold onto the sales lead in systems.
Source: me
New Civilization Game Coming...to Facebook
Yeah, you read that right. The new Civilization game is coming to Facebook in the form of Civilization Network. Sid Meier says that the social app will include everything we love about the series and that it will be free to play. Not exactly what we were looking for, but then again it is difficult to build upon the almost perfection that Civilization IV was. It’s not Civilization V, but it is something.
Source: Joystiq
Need for Speed Series Sells 100 Million
With the sales of Need for Speed SHIFT, the NFS series has now sold 100 million copies worldwide and earned $2.7 billion dollars over the 15 main releases in the series. There was a day that Need for Speed was the best selling title worldwide if you can believe it, outselling even soccer and Halo games. My hats off to you, Need for Speed, I’ve played all 15 of your games and enjoyed every minute of it. You may have gone off track lately, but your new game certainly breathes life back into you.
Source: Joystiq
Movie Studios Thinking of Holding Back DVD Rentals
We pull right out of gaming, although with Netflix connected to Xbox Live it is still tangentially tied to gaming. Movie studios are thinking about holding back their new titles for weeks before they can be rented starting next year. This means the only way you’d get a new release is if you purchased it because it wouldn’t show up at Netflix, RedBox or Blockbuster until weeks later.
The movie companies of course want you to buy their movies because they make more money that way than through the rental channel. The logical problem is that they may be taking a massive risk attempting this because I highly doubt people will go out and buy the movie instead of waiting some weeks for it to come to their favorite rental place. This whole idea is just stupid in my opinion and I can only guess the movie studios will hear backlash from their customers. For reference, I used to be quite liberal about buying DVDs, but for the past few years I’ve been very picky about what I buy versus what I rent.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Busy Release Week
Wallet threat level moves back into red this week. The ever popular Borderlands comes to PC this week as a holdover from last week. Other games coming out include DJ Hero w/turntable from Activision, Forza 3 from Microsoft on 360, Tekken 6 for PS3 and - for the first time in the series – 360, Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time for PS3 and the new DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Ballad of Gay Tony exclusively on the 360.
It may not be a huge week, but there are certainly games I’m interested in this week. How about you?
Source: me